The Chinese scientist who announced to the world in November 2018 that he had created a pair of gene-edited twin girls could face the death penalty for corruption and bribery charges, a British geneticist fears.

News of the birth of twin baby girls whose DNA had been edited using CRISPR technology to resist HIV broke on November 26th. He Jiankui, the scientist who purported to have created the gene-edited babies, said at the time that a possible 3rd pregnancy was underway. The announcements sparked outrage among the scientific community.

In December, Jiankui went missing, providing the first indication that his work amounted to a monumental and costly blunder. And, it seems, the decision could cost the man his life.

Jiankui is now thought to be living under armed guard at a state-owned apartment in Shenzhen, China, geneticist Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute in London, says.